The inventive concept relates generally to memory technologies. More particularly, certain embodiments of the inventive concept relate to nonvolatile memory devices and related methods of programming.
Nonvolatile memory devices can be found in a wide variety of electronic devices, including, for instance, tablet computers, mobile phones, digital cameras, and many others. As a consequence of the increasing performance demands of these and other devices, there is a general demand for nonvolatile devices having increased storage capacity. Accordingly, to address this demand, researchers continue to develop techniques for improving existing nonvolatile memory technologies, in addition to developing new nonvolatile memory technologies.
Two common approaches for increasing the storage capacity of nonvolatile memory devices are to decrease the size of memory cells and to increase the number of bits per memory cell. These approaches, however, tend to decease the operating margins of the devices, creating increased possibility of errors. Accordingly, as a complement to the above approaches, researchers also continue to develop approaches for maintaining the reliability of the memory devices.